The argument can be made that taking pictures of graffiti is appropriating, or that pictures of pictures are simply low-hanging fruit.

But when I’m packing a loaded Polaroid camera around I can’t help myself; I invariably wander the alleys of Pueblo’s Southside and Eastside neighborhoods on the lookout for a newly spray-painted mural or discovering something new about a long-standing one.

Spray painted murals on cinder block, one on Northern Ave., left, the other near Union Ave. share a pallet of blacks, blues, greys, reds, and yellows. Photos by Mike Sweeney/©2020

I’ve had my eye on couple murals recently. Thematically the two have nothing in common. There’s a colorful mural that boasts of Colorado’s bounty along the alley behind Julian’s Mexican restaurant just off Northern Ave. And between Victoria and Union Avenues, there’s huge mural that features a fanciful turtle and a bunch of Steampunk Tesla tubes. Both are painted on cinder block.

A detailed look, however, reveals they share a similar color palette of blacks, blues, greys, reds, and yellows. So while each mural tells its own disticnt story, both are predicated upon a nearly identical ranges of spray-painted colors. They are simultaneously different and the same.